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In the name of
Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Inews
Daily
Monday 20th March
2006 - 19th Safar 1427
Talabani hopeful on US-Iran talks
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has welcomed the prospect of talks between the US and Iran over Iraq. He rejected comments that civil war is already raging in Iraq, but said it had come close after the destruction of a Shia shrine in Samarra last month. He also said a new government can be formed within two weeks - or four at the most. He said all parties had reached agreement on many points which would also diminish the threat of civil war. Meanwhile, at least eight civilians - including a woman and a child - were killed by US forces in the town of Dhuluiya, north of Baghdad and a mortar shell exploded in the southern city of Karbala as Shias gather for one of the biggest events of their religious calendar. Gaza faces food shortage, says
UN
Wheat-flour stocks have run out in the Gaza Strip, with most bakeries closing and the UN warning of a looming humanitarian crisis after a nearly two-month commercial closure of Gaza imposed by the zionist state of Israel. Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians face an unprecedented food shortage because of Israeli closures that have prevented the import of wheat, a UN Office said on yesterday. Emergency shipments of food are to be brought into Gaza from Egypt today. According to the World Bank, 65% of Gazans live below the poverty line, surviving on less than $2 a day. Protests over Iraq war
continue
The third anniversary of the US-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters in dozens of cities around the globe. More than 7000 people marched through downtown Chicago in one of the largest protests in the US, demanding the US pull out of Iraq. In London, about 15,000 people joined a march from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. In Japan, anti-war rallies stretched into a second day on Sunday, with about 800 protesters chanting "No war! Stop the war!" and banging drums as they marched peacefully through downtown Tokyo towards the US embassy. Seven die as blast hits Pakistani
patrol
Suspected militants have blown up a police vehicle in northwestern Pakistan, killing seven people, including three policeman and three paramilitary troops. The vehicle was on a routine patrol on the outskirts of the town of Dera Ismail Khan on Sunday when the bomb, apparently planted in a dusty road, exploded as it passed over it. A passerby was among the dead, and hospital officials said five people were wounded including two women. No one claimed responsibility for the attack but the Pakistani interior minister said 'Islamist attackers' were probably behind the blast. Muslim, Jewish open congress to
talk peace
Muslim and Jewish leaders meeting in a rare face-to-face forum appealed yesterday to their faithful not to view each other as enemies and keep religion from being hijacked by extremists. "We have more common elements than elements which pull us apart," one of the rabbis said as a four-day congress of imams and rabbis opened in Seville, a southern Spanish city. The meeting, called the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace, is being sponsored by Hommes de Parole, a peace foundation based in Paris. Seville was chosen to host the meeting because of its rich symbolism as one of the Spanish cities where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in harmony under Muslim rule that began in the 8th century and lasted more than 700 years. Fatah to round up arms in Lebanon
refugee camps
Fatah’s chief in Lebanon said on yesterday his Palestinian faction would round up weapons from refugee camps amid growing calls for militias in the country to be disbanded. Leaders from across the political and religious spectrum have been meeting in Beirut to solve such contentious issues as the presence of armed Palestinians outside refugee camps. There are believed to be 380,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon, many of them in dire conditions in 12 refugee camps. A September 2004 UN Security Council Resolution calls on Lebanon to disarm all militias, including the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah. Saudi Arabia supports Hamas, says
foreign minister
The Saudi Foreign Minister said yesterday that Saudi Arabia supports the Palestinian Hamas movement, after talks with visiting Austrian President Heinz Fischer. He called for international recognition of the Hamas victory in free, democratic elections in January. He also warned that punishing Hamas would be the same as punishing the Palestinian people. On the Iranian nuclear dispute with the West, he said that if the leadership in Tehran had said it did not plan to build atomic bombs that should be taken seriously. He pointed out that Israel already has the atomic bomb. "The world community should call on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons programme. At present there were dual standards in questions of nuclear weapons," he said. Qatar seeks to reverse Arab brain
drain
Qatar is to try to reverse the Arab brain drain that has seen thousands of experts leave the region by bringing together expatriate Arab scientists at annual forums starting in April. The meetings will be held at Education City, an academic complex on the edge of Doha, which hosts branches of prestigious US colleges and has the objective of promoting scientific and technological research. More than 15,000 Arab physicians left their countries to go abroad between 1998 and 2000, according to a study by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). US using Saddam’s torture
chamber
An elite US Special Operations forces unit has converted one of Saddam Hussein’s former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention centre and used one of the former Iraqi leader’s torture chambers as its own interrogation cell. The chamber is named 'the Black Room'. The windowless, garage-size Black Room was used by some soldiers to beat prisoners with rifle butts, yell and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, use detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was allegedly to extract information to help hunt down Iraq’s 'most-wanted terrorist', Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Afghanistan’s drug barons making
hay
Afghans drugs barons are exploiting rampant corruption and threatening to turn Afghanistan into a narco-state, a US diplomat claimed. The US is allegedly the principle funder of efforts to rid Afghanistan of its huge illicit opium crop, which supplies nearly all the heroin in Europe and is keeping a large chunk of the Afghan economy illegal. Afghanistan’s illicit drugs industry is worth about $2.8 billion a year, the diplomat said, but only about $600 million filters down to the farmers that grow opium poppies, the rest going to traffickers and others in the chain. Iran reformists seek nuclear
freeze
Iran’s largest reformist party called on Sunday for dialogue with the US and the suspension of sensitive nuclear work in a bid to end the crisis with the international community. "In order to break the international consensus, we are proposing a return to previous policies and the voluntary suspension of all nuclear fuel cycle work to resolve this crisis and reestablish confidence," said the Participation Front, which is headed by Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of Iran’s former reformist president Mohammad Khatami. The UN Security Council is currently considering what action to take against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. Inews Daily - No Copyright - http://www.fsphost.com/inewsdaily -
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